Glory Boy!

OUT OF PRINT

Synopsis

This is the story of the author's great-great grandfather Isaac Scott. It traces Isaac's rural beginnings as the son of a Cumberland farmer to his life as a soldier in the Crimean War and India Mutiny.

A handsome elderly man, with a bushy white beard and a row of medals pinned to his chest, looks out from the front cover of a new book, Glory Boy!

He was Isaac Scott (1834-1908) and the book tells of his exploits as a soldier who served in both the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny — a story researched and written by his great-great grandson, Martin Daley, a Carlisle-born man who now works for the Royal Mail in Cheshire.Many people enjoy building up family trees, but Martin Daley has taken the exercise a step further, inspired by the knowledge that his ancestor had a military career of some distinction.The result is a book which combines the story of two overseas campaigns with the individual role of Isaac Scott who, though born in Cockermouth, moved to Penrith at an early age.

His parents, William and Agness, took a farm near the town, named Fernside, but then decided on a change of occupation and became “mine hosts” of the Grate Inn, King Street.

The new book contains a picture of the now-defunct pub, sited close to the similarly-named Grapes Hotel, which is still in existence. The old inn had an exterior flight of stairs and contained a divided-off room which was rented to Thomas Stewart, a barber.

On leaving the Boys’ National School, the Scotts’ son, Isaac, became an apprentice to William Turner, a tailor with a shop in Angel Lane, but he had nursed military ambitions since childhood and at the age of 20 he volunteered for service in the Crimean War and joined the 17th Lancers, signing on for 12 years.

In fact, his stay in the Crimea was cut short by the end of the war there, and his record did not match that of a fellow Penrithian, William Pearson — also from a licensed house in King Street! — who took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade.The most notable spell in Scott’s Army career was his service in India during the Mutiny, an episode described by Martin Daley as being “full of thrilling events and deeds of great valour, heroism and endurance”.

Isaac survived several fierce actions against the rebel forces but later, in a relatively minor skirmish, he received a bullet in the calf of his right leg, suffering a wound which was to trouble him for the rest of his life.

When Scott finally left the Army in 1867, the paymaster gave him the princely sum of 19s. 2d., which included his fare back to Penrith.

He then took up the more sedate occupation of rural postman, although he retained a link with militarism by enlisting in the peacetime force, the Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry, whose annual training was on Penrith’s Foundry field and the racecourse (now the golf course).He became a sergeant in the Edenhall troop, later advancing to quartermaster (then the equivalent of sergeant-major).

The last 30 years of Isaac Scott’s life were spent in Carlisle where he held several jobs and enjoyed the reflected glory of having a son, Frank, who won many trophies as an athlete.When the old man died in the autumn of 1908 he was given a military funeral, three volleys were fired over the grave and buglers sounded The Last Post.

The book is clearly a labour of love — a family tribute written with pride about a proud man.